The inventors of this application have proposed a technology regarding a sheet-like (cloth-like, paper-like, foil-like, tabular, or the like, which spreads in a plane and is thin) communication unit in which a plurality of communication elements are embedded. For example, proposed in the following literature is a communication unit that transmits a signal as a plurality of communication elements, embedded in a sheet-like member (hereinafter, called “sheet-like body”) without forming individual wirings, relay the signal. Patent Literature 1: Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication KOKAI Publication No. 2004-007448
According to the technology disclosed in the “Patent Literature 1”, the communication elements are laid out at the vertices of a grid-like, triangular, or honeycomb-like drawing on the surface of the sheet-like body. Each communication element communicates only with other communication elements laid out around it by using the fact that a change in electric potential generated by the communication element is to be intensively transmitted to the neighborhood, but transmitted to a distant place in an attenuation manner.
This local communication allows successive transmission of a signal between the communication elements, thereby transmitting the signal to the destination communication element The plurality of communication elements are hierarchically divided by management functions, and routing data is set in each hierarchy, so that a signal can be efficiently transmitted to the final destination communication element.